Seasonal Migration and Improving Living Standards in Vietnam |
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Authors: | Alan de Brauw Tomoko Harigaya |
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Institution: | Alan de Brauw is research fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington DC, and assistant professor, Department of Economics, Williams College, Williamstown, MA.;Tomoko Harigaya is research assistant, Innovation for Poverty Action, New Haven, CT. Senior authorship is shared. |
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Abstract: | We use panel data methods to explore whether households in Vietnam used seasonal migration to increase their living standards during the 1990s. Using per capita expenditures as our primary measure of living standards and historical and latent network variables as instruments for migration, we can attribute 5.2 percentage points of annualized expenditure growth to increased migration. The results are robust to several alternative measures of living standards. As the estimates suggest migration accounts for a 3 percentage point decrease in the poverty headcount, we conclude migration played an important role in the improvement of living standards observed in Vietnam. |
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Keywords: | instrumental variables measurement error migration panel data Vietnam |
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